Brought the East Bay barbeque to Japan...

Hot dogs, steak, chicken, and ribs for meat. Some things I learned from the whole thing in regards to the four basic food groups...

Hot dogs: Japanese people don't eat hot dogs. Japanese people see hot dogs on the grill, and immediately think "Breakfast sausage." So I had to have an another American show everybody how to prepare the hot dog. That Japanese dude at the Coney Island hot dog eating contest sure had me fooled. Anyway, I bought 30 hot dogs, and 30 hot dog buns (often does that happen?). In the end, I had about 9 hot dog buns leftover. What happened? I think some people either didn't hear the explanation, thought that the explanation was too difficult, or decided that Japanese people just shouldn't eat sausages like hot dogs.

Steak: When Japanese people grill cow, they always cut it real thin. If it's being fried in a pan, steak is ok. We had steak. We grilled it. Wow, I got a lot of comments about that. "What if it's not properly cooked?" "You're gonna have a red steak." "This is so different." "You're definitely American." The comments went on. Apparently, Japanese people don't like medium rare steak. They like it medium well. Regardless, the beef disappeared real quick.

Chicken: When Japanese people grill chicken, they cut it into chunks and shish kabob it (kushiyaki style). Yeah, I heard the comments on the steak again when the chicken got put on the grills. Funny, because unlike my usual ways, I cut the thigh meat in half for financial reasons. In the end, I found out that most everybody liked the chicken the best. As Dean used to call it, "Boodeyo chicken."

Ribs: Japanese people have never cooked ribs like... well, ribs. I broke out the ribs towards the end. I swear I saw people look at me like I was some primitive caveman when I put the ribs on. People wanted to see Oog and Thog do their thing. This was definitely the draw. Some people really liked em. Some people just wanted to try em for novelty purposes. And some were just too full from the hot dogs, steak, and chicken to eat em. That of course was great news for us grillers.

All in all, a great success. Have no worries, thanks to many other people, we ate vegetables and lots and lots of fruit! About 25 people came out. Too bad none of the neighbors wanted to join. Then again, we had just enough food. After all, I was preparing for 25 people.